Bittersweet Creek (14 page)

“Shelley Jean!” Delilah warned.

I fished through my purse until I found a five and a ten. It was more than Delilah had quoted me for acrylic removal, but I couldn't breathe. “Thanks. Good talking to you.”

Shelley Jean muttered something about some people having more money than sense but it was no skin off her nose.

I bolted, but Delilah reached out to grab my arm as I passed her. “Where do you think you're going?”

“I don't know if I have time to do my hair after all.”

I pleaded with my eyes even though I knew Delilah was not known for mercy. She went through beauticians and nail techs faster than Henry the Eighth went through wives, and their departures were usually just as brutal. Customers only put up with her because she was an absolute wizard with hair.

“I am
not
going to let you walk out of
my
salon looking like that.”

I exhaled deeply and took a seat in her chair. Delilah leaned the chair back and started to wash my hair, massaging my scalp with her unforgiving nails. I could almost forget about Richard and about Shelley Jean gossiping.... When Delilah sat the chair up and began to towel off my hair, I noticed Shelley Jean was absorbed with a different customer, a middle-aged woman whose lips were pursed as though she'd taken a sip of vinegar.

“All right, what do you want to do today, Little Hank?”

“I was thinking you could take about three or four inches off.”

Delilah twirled the chair one way and then the other. “Five would be better.”

No arguing with her. If I had really wanted control over my haircut I would've been better served going somewhere else.

“Uncross your legs!”

If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard Delilah say that. Mom used to silently motion to me from across the room, but I'd always forget and cross them back again.

“How's Hank doing?” Delilah asked as her scissors whooshed and snipped close to my ears.

“Well, I think. He's not got too much longer before they can take the cast off, so he's getting especially ornery.”

Delilah chuckled at that. “Well, I bet he's glad to have you home.”

Was he? Had Hank Satterfield said yet that he was happy to have me home?

The older lady whose name I still couldn't remember started a conversation with Delilah about the evils of being a Democrat, and suddenly I didn't have anything else to think about but what Shelley Jean and Julian did.

Impotent? I didn't believe it. Not for a minute.

And why should you care?
I shouldn't. And just because Julian didn't have sex with Shelley Jean didn't mean he hadn't had sex with someone else. Avoiding Shelley Jean just made sense.

You care because you
did
have sex with Richard.

What did that matter? I wasn't going to beat myself up over it. Sure, I should've got a divorce first, but Julian and I had broken up for a while by the time Richard and I got horizontal.

I looked instinctively at my lap to see my engagement ring, but my hands were clasped underneath the cape. Richard was Julian's opposite in every way, and I did mean every way. But Julian had stayed true to our vows, and I hadn't. . . .

“What do you think about that?” Delilah's voice brought me back to the hair salon where my body had sat quietly while my mind went through a gymnastics floor routine.

“Huh? What?”

“Take a look in the mirror and see what you think.”

Cutting off a few inches seemed to take the weight off my hair, allowing it to bounce up in waves instead of living somewhere between straight and frizzy. Much better.

And with a fresh face sans makeup, a lot more like me.

I smiled. “Thanks, Delilah. I always feel lighter when you get done working your magic.”

Her lips hardly tugged up at the corners, but her eyes twinkled. “Quit messing with that flat iron. You're frying your hair. And get you some of that shampoo in the blue bottle before you go.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I dared to swish my hair a little to each side. Much lighter, but still long enough to pull into two ponytails if I needed to get the hair out of my face. I frowned at the mental image of me with two ponytails. Seemed I was turning into Elly May after all.

“You tell Hank I said hello.” Delilah's gray eyes were back to steel. She shook out the cape. “And don't mind anything Shelley Jean says.”

Too late for that.

Paying Delilah even more generously than Shelley Jean, I headed back out to the truck. I had the most ridiculous urge to drive straight up to Julian McElroy and ask him if what Shelley Jean had said was true. But what in the blue hell did it matter to me? Why did I care?

Guilt gnawed at me.
You need to know he didn't take your marriage seriously. Otherwise, maybe you're the one who did him wrong.

Julian

A
ccording to Ben's preliminary research, poor Richard shot himself in the foot by tearing up those divorce papers because the great state of Tennessee wasn't too keen on annulments. Marrying your cousin? Sure. Wanna get married by the mayor? Why not. But try to prove you have a sham marriage that you haven't consummated? Yeah, Tennessee isn't getting into all that. Basically, it was going to take a better lawyer than mine to get an annulment.

Of course, Richard Paris undoubtedly had a better lawyer than I did.

And Ben Little was one damn fine lawyer.

When I got home, I walked to the back porch instinctively, but one look at the punching bag told me I didn't need it. I didn't want to hit anything or anyone. Instead, I saddled up my old chestnut gelding, Benedick, and went for a ride. Blowing off work and riding seemed like playing hooky, but then I realized I was guiding ol' Benedick along the edges of the farm that was supposed to have been mine. Kinda felt like I was making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Or a farewell tour.

What in the hell had I been thinking? Or was it hoping? Maybe I'd hoped the sonuvabitch had finally found a lick of sense and decided to let me legally do what I'd already been doing. Or maybe I'd hoped he'd already be dead by now. He certainly drank enough, smoked enough, pissed off enough of the right people. But there he was, always needling me. Fact was, I, like Tom Cruise's character in
A Few Good Men,
couldn't handle the truth: That bastard was going to live forever, and I was a fool for staying here and hoping for anything else.

Just as I came to that conclusion, I heard the pitiful bleat of a calf and urged Benedick ahead. That had to be Romy's calf bawling on the other side of the fence. Hank had mentioned something about how his newest calf was half-Hereford when I went over to change the oil in his truck. Our bull had gotten loose a while back. Little black cow with a white face? Yep. Half-Hereford and half-Angus.

I weighed my options. Getting the calf back to where she belonged would take half the day if I tried to chase her. I tossed Benedick's reins over the branch of a nearby maple tree and stepped over the electric fence. The calf skittered back.

Well, shit.
“You would wander as far away from your barn as you possibly could.”

She popped one ear back in answer and lifted her nose to smell the air around me, but she didn't know me, so I wasn't getting anywhere close. I fished my cell from my back pocket, hoping I could get enough bars to make a call. Hank answered on the third ring and said he'd send Romy right over just as soon as she got back, which shouldn't be too long.

Hank's idea of “not too long” and mine were very different things, but I sat on a stump and dug rocks out of my work boot with a pocketknife until she finally showed up in their ancient Ford pickup.

“Get lost?” I asked.

“Nope. I had some things to do in town,” she said as she slid out of the truck, bringing a bottle of formula with her. The little calf ran to Romy with tail wagging like an overgrown dog.

“Hair looks nice,” I said. It was shorter but not as perfectly straight as it had been. I used to give her a hard time when she cut her hair, but this looked more like her.

The calf soon backed her into the grille of the truck, and she giggled, holding on to the bottle for dear life. Something inside me cracked and broke. That beautiful woman was my wife. Now that she'd cut the city off her hair and taken off the ridiculous nails, she looked at home in an Alan Jackson T-shirt and cutoff shorts, her killer legs ending abruptly in the boots I'd bought her.

And she, like the McElroy farm, was yet another thing I couldn't have. “Need some help getting the calf back up?”

She brushed back her hair. “You gonna hold her in the back?”

“Hell, no. One, she doesn't like me. Two, she'll jump out. We'll put her in the cab. I'll drive, and you can keep her calm.”

She arched an eyebrow at me but couldn't come up with a better plan. “I thought you'd die before you drove a Ford. Only thing that'd ever go wrong with a Chevy would be the alternator at seventy-five thousand miles, give or take, and—”

“Hand me the keys.”

I hoisted the calf into the truck and helped Romy inside before rounding the truck and climbing inside.

“I can't help but notice you aimed the dangerous end in my direction.” She leaned back against the seat as far from the twitching tail as she could. She put her right hand on the calf and rested her left arm on the top of the seat. Her bandage was a little smaller.

“It's a short trip. Maybe you'll be lucky,” I said as I started the ignition. Suddenly, the calf had her wet nose all in my business. “You're not driving, I don't care how curious you are.”

Romy giggled again. “Her name is Star.”

A quick glimpse and I saw the little black star on the forehead of an otherwise white face. “Nice to meet you, Star, but I'd prefer you stay at home next time.”

The calf slobbered on me then almost sat on Romy as we went through a dip in the pasture.

“Thank you for the boots, Julian,” Romy said softly.

“You're welcome.”

“And for looking out for little Star, here.”

“That's what neighbors are supposed to do, right?”

She didn't answer. Mamaw once told me the whole McElroy-Satterfield feud had begun before the Civil War over a lost calf that had wandered from the Satterfields to the McElroys. Some young McElroy who was, no doubt, directly related to Curtis, had quickly cut a notch in the calf's ear to “prove” it belonged to the McElroys. They'd been squabbling over property lines ever since.

And here I was giving a calf back.

I pulled up in front of the pen, and Romy cajoled the calf back inside while I walked the perimeter looking for the spot where the calf got out. Romy was the one to spot it first. The fence around the pen was ramshackle, parts of it twice as old as either Romy or me. Some of the boards between the barn and the gate that led back to the larger pasture had fallen down. Or, more accurately, had been butted down by the calf, who had squeezed underneath.

“If you'll get me a hammer and some nails, I'll fix this for you.”

“I'd appreciate that,” she said softly. She climbed over the short gate on the other side of the pen, no doubt on her way to the neighboring milk barn to find some tools.

Just a week or so back into the country, and she was walking with purpose, not sashaying as she had on that first day back in town. I liked the country-girl walk better. And I'd always loved to watch her go, especially when I knew she was coming back.

Romy

I
rifled through Daddy's toolbox looking for a hammer and then through the scattered cardboard boxes looking for nails.

No, I'd heard about the cat and curiosity, and I would not ask Julian if what Shelley Jean had said was true. After all, we were in the middle of an uneasy truce now that he'd taken care of the dogs and been kind enough to buy me the boots. No. What Julian did in his private life was no business of mine.

Stomping across the side yard and back to the pen, I repeated my mantra. I clambered over the gate, rubbed Star's head, and surprised myself by saying, “So, guess who I ran into today?”

“The Queen of England,” he said as he took the hammer and nails.

“Shelley Jean.”

Was it my imagination or did he flinch at the mention of her name? If so, he shrugged it off quickly and began to pry off boards and then hammer them all back in place. By the time he finished I practically itched with curiosity. “Don't suppose you're interested in what she had to say.”

“Dammit, Romy, I wouldn't believe a word of it.” He tried to brush past me, but I grabbed his arm. Somehow I expected Richard's arm, but instead of a trim yet soft arm, I got a hard bicep.

“Care to let go? I need to go get Benedick from the maple tree. I'd appreciate a ride back over there.”

My cheeks warmed, but I removed my hand. “She said she'd done me a favor because you couldn't get it up.”

He laughed. “Of course she did. She didn't want to tell you I got sober enough to come to my senses. Now what the hell do you care?”

I swallowed hard. Reading between the lines, I heard, “You didn't come back for me? What's it to you?” And, really, why did I care? I was going to marry Richard just as soon as I got an annulment from Julian, so it was none of my business. We were only married on paper, having never lived together. Still, the truth bubbled up to the surface: “I guess I didn't like the idea of you with her.”
Or anyone else for that matter. Not that I can admit that.

“Hell, you're about to marry another guy. What the—?” The truth smacked him halfway through his question. “I've done a lot of shitty things in my life, but cheating on you is not one of them.”

His words hit me like a punch in the gut.

Oh, God. He considers it cheating.
“No one?”

He grunted something that sounded a lot like “no one,” then added, “And, for the record, I don't really like the idea of you with him.”

We stared each other down for so long, I thought tumbleweeds might roll through along with a Wild West whistle. He was the first to look away, but I didn't feel all that victorious.

He stood you up and didn't answer any of your calls or letters. He did not follow you to explain himself. You do
not
owe him any explanations.

He unlatched the gate rather than climbing over it, and walked the tools back to the milk barn. I trudged behind him, stopping to latch the gate once I was on the other side. Only then did it strike me as odd that he'd walked right into the cinder-block milk barn as though he owned the place. I drove him back through the pasture to the low spot in the fence and the creek where we'd always played together. We didn't say anything, and I couldn't tell if I'd ruined something by my questions or somehow made it better.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, pulling up his ball cap and putting it back on his head. I realized the straw cowboy hat he'd smashed must've been his only one.

“Thanks for fixing the fence,” I said.

“Well, you'd better keep an eye on it and keep that calf on your side,” he said with a grin that made the thin white scar on his chin go tight. “Feuds have started over less.”

 

I was still confounded by Julian, by us, by the ridiculous predicament we were in when I made it back to the house. “Hey, Daddy, you want me to fix some supper or—?”

I didn't finish that sentence because the muted conversation from the living room registered. We had company.

“Rosemary, quit your yelling and come in here and meet Mr. Marsh.”

Slowly, I crossed the worn linoleum of the kitchen and entered the living room. Sure enough, a pudgy, balding man sat on the edge of the world's most uncomfortable couch, a beret in his hands. He stood to shake my hand. “Miss Satterfield, it's a pleasure.”

“Nice to meet you, and please call me Romy,” my manners insisted I say. The hackles on the back of my neck suggested it wasn't nice to meet him at all.

“Go on. Have a seat over there.” Hank lifted his hand from the cat long enough to point to Granny's rocker in the corner. I eased into the low chair, waiting for the enigmatic Mr. Marsh to speak. He could be a Jehovah's Witness come to preach the Kingdom of Heaven, but I didn't think so. For one thing, Daddy would've already run him off. For another, his shifty eyes made me think he wanted something.

“Well, Romy,” he said. “I've been talking with your father for some time about the possibilities of this farm.”

“Possibilities?”

“Yes, up until now, Hank has been determined to hang on to the place even though I'm sure he's having a hard time paying the property taxes with only the income from renting out the land and the few head of cattle he has. Probably spending more than you're making, aren't you, Hank?”

He nodded with his eyes mostly closed. “Pretty much.”

“So, I think I've just about talked him into selling the farm to one of my holdings, a company that develops golf course communities. Together with the farm next door, the rolling hills would make a really nice course, and we could keep this house as a sort of clubhouse. After all, it would be a shame to tear down such a lovely old place. You see . . .”

He kept talking, but I tuned him out, even pinched myself to make sure I wasn't in the middle of one of the worst nightmares ever.
Well, what did you think, Romy? Did you think Daddy was going to live forever?

Damned if I didn't think he would.

Most of my life Hank Satterfield had stood tall. He worked so hard at everything he did that I couldn't imagine him ever stopping. He was my daddy, and if ever he did anything wrong, then somehow it still had to be right. But if there was one thing this summer had taught me, it was that my father wasn't invincible. One of these days I was going to lose him, and I didn't have any brothers or sisters to share that grief or to share the load of what to do with all of the things he left behind.

“I'm sure you're going to need some time to think it all over,” Mr. Marsh was saying. “I've put all of the literature in a folder for you with some quotes, but my company is open to ensuring that this structure remains on the property and intact—”

“—and maybe I'll come by early next week to see where we are on the deal.”

It seemed as though Mr. Marsh could sense my hostilities because he was backing to the door, his ridiculous beret still in his hands.

“All right, Mr. Marsh, you have a good day now, you hear?” It took every ounce of my willpower to hold on to the screen door and not let it slam behind me. “Daddy, what's this all about?”

“Romy, baby. Have a seat.”

It was my turn to take a seat on the ridiculously scratchy couch.

“I've always told that Marsh fellow where he could stuff it, but he still comes around once a month or so—probably hoping I'm dead and gone. Then Richard came in and proposed and it got me to thinking. I know I promised you a spot to build a house, anywhere you liked on this whole farm, but you're going to want to go live with him. You're not going to want this old place.”

“But, Daddy—”

“Now, hush, and hear me out. I ain't dead yet, but this old bone is taking one helluva long time to heal. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I can't keep messing with these cows forever. Maybe it'd be best if I went on and moved into town close to everything for when I can't drive anymore.”

The tears came unbidden. My daddy? In town? “But, Daddy, isn't town where all of the ‘idiots who don't like space or clean air' live?”

“Baby, I gotta be practical. I guess some part of me hoped you would someday come on home, but you've gone and got yourself engaged to a Nashville boy. He seems like a . . . decent fella. I don't want to be a burden to you.”

“A burden? Are you serious?” I could hardly choke out the words from beyond the lump in my throat. “No. There has to be another way. We'll find another way.”

“Rosemary, sweetheart. The ol' Vandiver boy ain't making nothing on the cotton. I don't have any hay put up for the cows, so I'm going to have to sell them at the end of the summer anyway. It's the right thing to do.”

One look into his hooded eyes, and I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. The Satterfields had made it through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and living next to the biggest bunch of assholes the world had ever seen. We couldn't stop now just because Richard Paris had asked me to marry him. Hell, the Paris family had law schools named after them. And streets. And public buildings. This little patch of land in West Tennessee was the whole reason my Daddy existed and thus the only reason I existed.

“I'll bale hay. I'll move home and teach here in the county.”

“But what about Richard?”

“We'll just have to postpone the wedding. We can make long distance work for a little while.” I stared through my father, daring him to tell me to go one more time.

Instead, he sighed. “I hate it when you give me that look. It reminds me of your mother.” Mercutio leaped out of his lap and landed with a thud. Daddy didn't know what to do with his hands then. “Tell you what. We'll just talk about this at the end of the summer. See if you still feel the same way then.”

The end of the summer. I could do that.

Then Mr. Marsh's words came back to me: “
Together with the farm next door . . .
”

I would've sworn Julian wouldn't give up his place in a million years. But his father, on the other hand . . .

“Daddy, I gotta go.”